Which has me wondering, can stations be destroyed? Or at least damaged to a point where the chunks that make the station become unstuck with an arbitrary random variable to simulate an explosive decompression of certain atmospheric levels to give realistic space debris?
Sorry, that just came out of nowhere.

Excellent post Lindsey, looking forward to reading it now

Destroyed and damaged? Yes. Can pieces break apart? We're not promising that for 1.0, unfortunately. And thank you for the kind words

A good source of inspiration is the EVE online stuff (I know, I know, I keep on rabbiting about how good EVE ships and stations are) and I would definitely be interested to see what stations and ships with that level of detail can end up as when generated procedurally!

"You’ve got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself... because it stimulates you to do things you haven’t done before. The whole thing is if you know where you’re going, you’ve gone, as the poet says. And that’s death."
- Stephen Sondheim

Dynamic debris might be too much for 1.0, but what about dynamic, animated textures? per-tri /per-quad textures? multiple material layers with different constraints as to their placement?

Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can

Also the whole fleet mechanic thing will allow for some pretty awesome battles with EVE-level detail ships (here I go again )

Also I think that procedural weapons and turrets/mining lasers should be based upon this:
Sizes:
Large
Applies to anything above a battlecruiser
Medium
Applies to anything below battlecruiser but above fighter or (small) frigate
Small
Applies to small frigates and fighters and drones

Maybe rarer types of weapons as well
Also they should have random (but not stupid) colors, so there is some diversity...

Put all of that together and throw a ship in and you're ready to go on your personal crusade
Also, huge ships should rightly have huge amounts of turrets, but to prevent having to activate them all one by one you could assign them "batches" or numbers, and when one of those is pressed it activates the whole group.

You know what I had a really good idea so I'm going off to the suggestions thread... ...also this sounds kinda weird but, if there is a creative/admin mode, then I would like to have a feature where you can spawn in procedural ships... ...but enough of this, off to the suggestions thread!

Large
Applies to anything above a battlecruiser
Medium
Applies to anything below battlecruiser but above fighter or (small) frigate
Small
Applies to small frigates and fighters and drones

so you want to squeeze 9ish orders of magnitude in size difference into 3 groups?
so every size step is a factor 31000 more voluminous than the previous one, a multiplier of 31 in every direction (the number similarity pleases my OCD)

so theres exactly one size of missile... for ships of volume 1 and for ships of size 1000000000 (factor 1000 in each direction according to the last thing i heard from josh)
you differentiate guns out into various arbitrary categories but missiles are just one thing?

where is a railgun different from any other cannon?
you can build them in all kinds of sizes and fire rates, a lot like conventional, chemical, guns.

I would say that in general a railgun refers to a kinetic weapon fired using a propulsion mechanism in the ship. This is different from a standard gun, for which the propulsion of the projectile is contained in the projectile. I don't really know how this would be different in LT or if it would be different at all. This would be something that I would want to mod in, the ability to have projectiles that you fire actually have an effect on the total momentum of your ship. A really interesting example of this in effect would be actually using your weapons to speed up your ship by firing in the same direction as thrusters, or to be able to do a particularly sharp turn by firing a massive railgun in the opposite direction you want to go.

A life well lived only happens once.Seems deep until you think about it.

Large
Applies to anything above a battlecruiser
Medium
Applies to anything below battlecruiser but above fighter or (small) frigate
Small
Applies to small frigates and fighters and drones

so you want to squeeze 9ish orders of magnitude in size difference into 3 groups?
so every size step is a factor 31000 more voluminous than the previous one, a multiplier of 31 in every direction (the number similarity pleases my OCD)

so theres exactly one size of missile... for ships of volume 1 and for ships of size 1000000000 (factor 1000 in each direction according to the last thing i heard from josh)
you differentiate guns out into various arbitrary categories but missiles are just one thing?

"You’ve got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself... because it stimulates you to do things you haven’t done before. The whole thing is if you know where you’re going, you’ve gone, as the poet says. And that’s death."
- Stephen Sondheim